Vampire: The Masquerade

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Vampire: The Masquerade is the first Classic World of Darkness game and the first Storyteller System game published by White Wolf. A major departure from the more power and heroics oriented games of the era, VTM is a game of personal horror. It is the parent and the most popular of all the World of Darkness games, and was the genesis of almost all the major ideas people associate with White Wolf.

In Vampire: the Masquerade, the players assume the role of vampires, immortal beings cursed with an unquenchable thirst for blood and vulnerability to sunlight - creatures forever bound to their inner Beast (the animal urges of hunger, fear and rage). It is a game of personal horror, as the characters are continually forced to walk a moral tightrope between their need to survive and the horrific means by which they ensure it.

Vampires are one of the three main supernatural races in the Classic World of Darkness and the fundamental characters of Vampire: The Masquerade and Kindred of the East. The article above offers a closer look at vampires, with their physiology, their politics and their clan division.

In Vampire: The Masquerade, 'Kindred' is the most common euphemism for a vampire. However, the term is mostly used by vampires who strive to maintain their Humanity. On the other hand, Sabbat vampires prefer the term 'Cainite' to refer to themselves - as many of them believe that the curse that the vampiric curse originated with the biblical Cain, after he murdered his brother Abel. The term 'Kine' (i.e. 'cattle') is the opposite of Kindred, and refers to human population.

Most vampires live in cities, which are run feudally by the Princes; life in a city is one of constant political manipulation and paranoia, as the Cainites vie for food, territory and power. But while they must dwell in close contact with their source of sustenance, vampires largely fear the exposure to the mortal world, and since the Inquisition the majority of these creatures have lived under the Masquerade - an enforced campaign to hide their supernatural existences from humanity.

In general, vampiric societies consist of two levels: sects and clans. Characters within the Vampire setting are members of one of the clans or minor bloodlines offered, and usually belong to factions associated with these or that reflect a general ideological stance the characters happen to share. For example, a Brujah may belong to the Camarilla, the Sabbat, or the Anarchs, but very few Tremere would be found among the Sabbat and even more rarely among the Anarchs.

Some clans and most of the minor bloodlines declare themselves independent from any sects. In addition, the Laibon, known as the Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom by Western Vampires, are not so much a sect as a cultural group bound together loosely by a powerful spiritual bond to the land and the people of Africa. While the Kuei-jin, also known as the Kindred of the East, share some superficial similarity to the western vampires, but they are actually an entirely different variety of supernatural beings.

Created by Mark Rein·Hagen, Vampire: The Masquerade was the first of White Wolf Game Studio's Classic World of Darkness live-action and role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered around vampires in a modern Gothic-Punk world. The Revised Edition, sometimes alternately referred to as the Third Edition by fans, was released in 1998 and explains, "the setting of Vampire is a composite of its populace and their despair". The title of the series comes from "The Masquerade", referring to the Camarilla's attempts to hide vampirism from humans and their governments and mass media.

In August 2004, the games set in the Classic World of Darkness were replaced by the World of Darkness, and Vampire: The Masquerade was replaced with Vampire: The Requiem. Although Requiem is an entirely new game, rather than a continuation of the classic, it uses many elements of the classic game, including certain clans and disciplines. The article above summarizes those revisions.